Two Lightroom performance tips for you today:
This will keep your Lightroom installation working more quickly.
Just received the new Honl Photo bounce card/speed snoot.
It is like the previous ones in that it is small, sturdy, and conveniently attaches to the Speed Strap.
What’s different?
This one has not a white but a gold reflector (equivalent to 1/4 CTO).
That means I can use it to:
Yet another thing to make my light-life easier.
I am going to be once again sharing my Flash expertise in Phoenix next month – 22 and 23 March – for pro and emerging pro users. You can be sure I am going to show how these small modifiers enable a whole new world of flash.
Lenses for portraits, you ask? Which ones to use?
I usually suggest:
The faster, the better. f/2.8 lenses are better than f/3.5-5.6 lenses. f/1.4 lenses are even better.
The affordable, great 50mm f/1.8 is a lens you should own (if you have a Nikon D40/60/3000/5000 you need to focus it manually). If you don;t have one yet, go get it.
This quick guide, which works for most photographers, should start you off well enough.
You do not always need many lights. Sometimes, one light is enough:
f/8, 1/125th, 100 ISO
That is just one studio light, fired through a pocketwizard (but I could have used a cable) – and a reflector on the other side. This leads to this:
Yes, of course a background light, hairlight,and so on, would give me more control.
But we should all be aware that this amount of lighting is sometimes neither possible nor practical. And one light plus a reflector can give you nice light.
When you travel with a suitcase, bring two camera bags. A small one and a large one.
The trick: one of these bags goes into your suitcase, filled with underwear, socks and other things you were going to bring anyway. That way it takes up no space.
So now when you get to your destination, you have a choice of camera bags every day: the large one, or the small one.
I was in Toronto’s historic Distillery District today:
So here are my obligatory truck shots!
A photographer’s paradise. Do check out The Kodiak Gallery there (and check out my exhibited work there – “IV” in March!)
I shot a school Sunday: “Photo Day” portraits at a music school.
My colleague Anita and I used strobes, backdrops, and Canon cameras: 40D, a 7D and a 1D Mark IV. A few interesting observations:
The 1D is the pro workhorse, of course, and it performed great (redundant memory card included!), but I must say, the 7D was a real pleasure to use. Especially at low ISO (100-400, say), I see no reason not to use it for pro studio work.
In another fine example of anti-photography harassment, a Lancashire photographer was arrested for taking photographs. “Because of terrorism” and “photography is suspicious” were some of the reasons expressed by police in the photographer’s tape of the incident, in this article in The Guardian.
I have seen this many times when visiting the UK: Big Brother does not like photography except when He is doing it.
The photographer in this incident was polite and articulate and knew the law. It is indeed incumbent on us photographers to stop this escalation of nonsense.
Adobe or sRGB? You may have wondered how to set up your camera in this regard. Look through its menus and the choice of colour space will come up.
This question means “how shall I translate the colours to bits when making a JPG file”.
So what determines your choice?
So the answer is:
Simple. Like so many things.
And this also represents one of the many advantages of shooting RAW: not ahving to worry about such things as colour space, as they are set later, when the JPG is generated.
On a dull day, with dreary light grey skies, you can consider doing a few things to add interest.
Off the Apache Trail, East of Phoenix, AZ
Technique:
You will see that even on a dull day you can make interesting images.